The World

Monday-Thursday 7PM, Friday 6PM

Hosted by
Lisa Mullins, Marco Werman

PRI's "The World" brings one-of-a-kind international stories home to America. Each weekday, host Lisa Mullins guides listeners through major issues and stories, linking global events directly to the American agenda.

President Donald Trump didn't let his travel ban expire on Sunday. Instead, he beefed it up and made it open-ended. Travel Ban 3.0, as some are calling it, bars people from six Muslim-majority countries, plus Venezuela and North Korea, from entering the US.

On Sunday, Germans re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the most powerful women in the world. But, for the first time in decades, they also voted a far-right political party into Germany's parliament, the Bundestag.

The Alternative for Germany party, known by its German initials AfD, campaigned aggressively against immigration policies that welcomed more than a million refugees to Germany in recent years.

With so much destruction from this season's hurricanes in the Caribbean, there are going to be a lot of people on the move — looking to start their lives in new places. We’ve already seen mass movements of people from areas plagued by drought, floods or storms. Many casually refer to these people as “climate refugees.”

But the problem with the term climate refugee starts with the word “refugee.”

“¿Estás bien? (Are you okay?)” my brother asked, a whisper in the darkness. Then he pointed his flashlight at me: “Alfredo?”

We were just a couple of hours into Hurricane Maria’s reign of terror as it made its way through Puerto Rico. Unlike many, we were in our mother’s two-story concrete home in a comfortable, middle-class suburb of San Juan. One town over, our mother was keeping busy taking care of her own mother and ailing uncle.

Hua Qu has not seen her husband, Xiyue Wang, since April 2016, when Wang left for Iran. He was doing research in Iranian archives for his dissertation. Wang, 36, is a PhD candidate at Princeton studying Eurasian history.

On the day before he was scheduled to return home to New Jersey, authorities in Tehran asked him to turn over his laptop and passport. Qu says he was interrogated but allowed to move freely. Three weeks later, Wang called and told his wife he’d been ordered to leave Iran immediately.

It’s a warm summer evening and a crowd gathers in a small, divey bar on Sunset Boulevard just east of Hollywood. The place is packed and every inch is decorated with bright strings of light, tapa cloth and tropical knickknacks. Folks new to the bar and longtime patrons, some wearing Hawaiian shirts and holding their own unique mugs, sip strong cocktails.

Welcome to the Tiki-Ti, the oldest family-owned Tiki bar in Los Angeles, the birthplace of the Polynesian-inspired rum palaces that were all the rage in the 1940s through the 1960s.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi will not be going home anytime soon. His opinion piece in The Washington Post has drawn fire in the Saudi press, all because he dared write about a crackdown on free speech in the kingdom.

Driving up to a trailhead just a few miles from the US-Mexico border in Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, biologist Rosemary Schiano’s first advice is to cover our spare water gallons.

“People will break into your car if they see water, especially in this heat,” she says.

It’s just past 8 a.m. and the temperature in this part of the Sonoran Desert is already climbing above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Arroyos slice into a mountainous expanse laden with Organ Pipe’s namesake cactus.

Russia is putting Kalashnikov on a pedestal, literally and metaphorically.

Literally, a statue of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the iconic AK-47 rifle, was unveiled in downtown Moscow on Tuesday. Metaphorically, the Kremlin is pushing his rifle as “a true cultural brand of Russia.”

The Kalashnikov rifle, in all its forms, is the most popular weapon ever made. It's killed more people than any other single weapon, including the atomic bomb. And yet, now you can buy Kalashnikov tchotchkesat a special souvenir shop at the Moscow International Airport.

Beginning life in a new country as a refugee is not easy. Culture shock can kick in over food, languages — or health care.

For some women from conservative Muslim families, US health care practices can clash with what they’re used to. Reporter Sarah Varney went to Buffalo, New York, a city that is increasingly accepting refugees from countries such as Somalia, Syria and Iraq, to speak to some women who are in that position.

Earlier this summer, the first Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week featured the creations of 25 designers from First Nations communities across Canada. Joleen Mitton, a former model who has Plains Cree and Blackfoot ancestry, launched the four-day event, held at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, Canada.

Forty years ago, Alaska had a near monopoly on supplying the world with salmon. But then Norwegian fishermen began experimenting with salmon farming — raising fish in enclosed ocean pens. By the 1990s, international salmon farming had taken off, not just in Norway, but also in Canada, Scotland and Chile.

Donald Trump loves the military. He claims "our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been." And now he’s touting an idea for celebrating the US armed forces: a massive military parade in Washington, for the Fourth of July, perhaps as soon as next year.

He was inspired by the Bastille Day parade he witnessed in Paris in July.

The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely believed to be behind social media disinformation campaigns aimed at influencing the 2016 US presidential election. As Germany’s general elections approach, many worry that a similar scenario could play out in that country.

Questions continue to swirl around President Trump's beleaguered former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Will he eventually cut a deal with federal investigators? Will he face an indictment and then enjoy a presidential pardon? Or will he be accused of a crime in the State of New York, and be beyond the reach of Oval Office mercy?